System Package Manager for Linux

With a BS degree in Technical Management, I hope to provide useful and relevant articles on topics related to various technologies.

Start the KDE Desktop in Linux

Source

The Task at Hand

In my college course "Introduction To Linux
Administration", we were presented with the task of answering five
questions related to packages on a Linux server, network monitoring, and
port scanning of common ports.

KPackage – Package Manage

The Package Manager displays all of the packages installed on your Linux system. | Source

What Packages Are On My Server?

It seems that most students were listing the command prompt
dpkg –l | less to get a list of packages installed on the server. I personally prefer the
“visual” method of doing things, so I chose to figure it out using the GUI (Graphic User Interface) using the KDE Desktop environment. So here’s what I did…

Once logged into the KDE environment, I selected System, and
then KPackage – Package Manager as shown below. Then the Package Manager shows
all of the packages that are installed on my server. This is very similar to
the concept of the Control Panel’s Add/Remove feature in Microsoft Windows 95 through Windows 7.

What to Get Rid Of:

As one who prefers the convenience of a GUI, I personally enjoy having access to all of the fun and nifty “toys” that are included in a GUI like the KDE. However, in a server situation, the purpose of the server is not to have fun, but to serve up whatever it is that the server is intended to serve up. Be that files, applications, web pages, email, or what have you, the idea is that the only thing the server should be running is what it absolutely needs to do its job as a server. This means that all Games, Extra Editors, Graphic design products, Sound and Video programs, etc. would have to go; especially the games.

The netStat Command:

What is the netStart command, and what are some of the parameters you can use with the netStart command?

The netstat program is a network activity management system.
It allows you to manage, track and report on how the network is interacting
with your system through the ports that carry data in and out of your server.
It is currently installed on our VM and could easily be installed or updated
using “Sudo apt-get install netstat.exe”.

Some of the common parameters you can use with netstat are…

-a Show ALL ports

-t Show ports listening/connected to
TCP

-u Show ports listening/connected to
UDP

-r To display the routing table

…and many more.

The nMap Command:

Nmap is a utility that is not installed on our VM, and is
used by both administrators and hackers to scan the ports of a host computer to
see what vulnerabilities there might be. As I described in an older post, a
port can have one of three different states when a scanner or other program
comes poking around. If the port is OPEN, then a hacker is inevitably going to walk
right in. If the port is CLOSED, the hacker might walk away, but may
also try to break the door down to see what he/she can get to. However, if the
port is STEALTH,
then it’s as though the port doesn’t even exist, because it just ignores the
request coming in, and refuses to send back any signal. This mode would most
likely cause the intruder to move on to the next port (or host).

The powerful feature of nmap, is its ability to use multiple
methods of scanning in order to circumvent a firewall thereby gaining access to
the system by connecting to its ports, and subsequently, its listening
applications.

Although in this class we don’t have any need for such a
utility, if you wanted to install it, you would use the command… sudo apt-get
install nmap.

Some Standard Ports

There are about 65,535 internet ports on a computer. That’s
a lot of potential doors and windows that an intruder can use to get at your
stuff. However, the first 1,023 ports are of certain concern because those are
the common ports used most for applications that listen for connection requests
in order to make use of network services. Here are a few of the most common
ports…

The reason these “common” ports pose a threat is mainly
because they are common. They are so well known (especially by hackers), and
used by the most common applications that we all use, that they become tasty morsels for a hacker to
nibble at.